It rained for three days. The snow was all gone now on the mountain-side below the station. The road was a torrent of muddy snow-water. It was too wet and slushy to go out. On the morning of the third day of rain we decided to go down into town.
“That is all right, Mr. Henry,” Guttingen said. “You do not have to give me any notice. I did not think you would want to stay now the bad weather is come.”
“We have to be near the hospital anyway on account of Madame,” I said.
“I understand,” he said. “Will you come back some time and stay, with the little one?”
“Yes, if you would have room.”
“In the spring when it is nice you could come and enjoy it. We could put the little one and the nurse in the big room that is closed now and you and Madame could have your same room looking out over the lake.”
“I’ll write about coming,” I said. We packed and left on the train that went down after lunch. Mr. and Mrs. Guttingen came down to the station with us and he hauled our baggage down on a sled through the slush. They stood beside the station in the rain waving good-by.
“They were very sweet,” Catherine said.
“They were fine to us.”
We took the train to Lausanne from Montreux. Looking out the window toward where we had lived you could not see the mountains for the clouds. The train stopped in Vevey, then went on, passing the lake on one side and on the other the wet brown fields and the bare woods and the wet houses. We came into Lausanne and went into a medium-sized hotel to stay. It was still raining as we drove through the streets and into the carriage entrance of the hotel. The concierge with brass keys on his lapels, the elevator, the carpets on the floors, and the white washbowls with shining fixtures, the brass bed and the big comfortable bedroom all seemed very great luxury after the Guttingens. The windows of the room looked out on a wet garden with a wall topped by an iron fence. Across the street, which sloped steeply, was another hotel with a similar wall and garden. I looked out at the rain falling in the fountain of the garden.
Catherine turned on all the lights and commenced unpacking. I ordered a whiskey and soda and lay on the bed and read the papers I had bought at the station. It was March, 1918, and the German offensive had started in France. I drank the whiskey and soda and read while Catherine unpacked and moved around the room.
“You know what I have to get, darling,” she said.
“What?”
“Baby clothes. There aren’t many people reach my time without baby things.”
“You can buy them.”
“I know. That’s what I’ll do to-morrow. I’ll find out what is necessary.”
“You ought to know. You were a nurse.”
“But so few of the soldiers had babies in the hospitals.”
“I did.”
She hit me with the pillow and spilled the whiskey and soda.
“I’ll order you another,” she said. “I’m sorry I spilled it.”
“There wasn’t much left. Come on over to the bed.”
“No. I have to try and make this room look like something.”
“Like what?”
“Like our home.”
“Hang out the Allied flags.”
“Oh shut up.”
“Say it again.”
“Shut up.”
“You say it so cautiously,” I said. “As though you didn’t want to offend any one.”
“I don’t.”
“Then come over to the bed.”
“All right.” She came and sat on the bed. “I know I’m no fun for you, darling. I’m like a big flour-barrel.”
“No you’re not. You’re beautiful and you’re sweet.”
“I’m just something very ungainly that you’ve married.”
“No you’re not. You’re more beautiful all the time.”
“But I will be thin again, darling.”
“You’re thin now.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Just whiskey and soda.”
“There’s another one coming,” she said. “And then should we order dinner up here?”
“That will be good.”
“Then we won’t go out, will we? We’ll just stay in to-night.”
“And play,” I said.
“I’ll drink some wine,” Catherine said. “It won’t hurt me. Maybe we can get some of our old white capri.”
“I know we can,” I said. “They’ll have Italian wines at a hotel this size.”
The waiter knocked at the door. He brought the whiskey in a glass with ice and beside the glass on a tray a small bottle of soda.
“Thank you,” I said. “Put it down there. Will you please have dinner for two brought up here and two bottles of dry white capri in ice.”
“Do you wish to commence your dinner with soup?”
“Do you want soup, Cat?”
“Please.”
“Bring soup for one.”
“Thank you, sir.” He went out and shut the door. I went back to the papers and the war in the papers and poured the soda slowly over the ice into the whiskey. I would have to tell them not to put ice in the whiskey. Let them bring the ice separately. That way you could tell how much whiskey there was and it would not suddenly be too thin from the soda. I would get a bottle of whiskey and have them bring ice and soda. That was the sensible way. Good whiskey was very pleasant. It was one of the pleasant parts of life.
“What are you thinking, darling?”
“About whiskey.”
“What about whiskey?”
“About how nice it is.”
Catherine made a face. “All right,” she said.
We stayed at that hotel three weeks. It was not bad; the diningroom was usually empty and very often we ate in our room at night. We walked in the town and took the cogwheel railway down to Ouchy and walked beside the lake. The weather became quite warm and it was like spring. We wished we were back in the mountains but the spring weather lasted only a few days and then the cold rawness of the breaking-up of winter came again.
Catherine bought the things she needed for the baby, up in the town. I went to a gymnasium in the arcade to box for exercise. I usually went up there in the morning while Catherine stayed late in bed. On the days of false spring it was very nice, after boxing and taking a shower, to walk along the streets smelling the spring in the air and stop at a café to sit and watch the people and read the paper and drink a vermouth; then go down to the hotel and have lunch with Catherine. The professor at the boxing gymnasium wore mustaches and was very precise and jerky and went all to pieces if you started after him. But it was pleasant in the gym. There was good air and light and I worked quite hard, skipping rope, shadowboxing, doing abdominal exercises lying on the floor in a patch of sunlight that came through the open window, and occasionally scaring the professor when we boxed. I could not shadow-box in front of the narrow long mirror at first because it looked so strange to see a man with a beard boxing. But finally I just thought it was funny. I wanted to take off the beard as soon as I started boxing but Catherine did not want me to.
Sometimes Catherine and I went for rides out in the country in a carriage. It was nice to ride when the days were pleasant and we found two good places where we could ride out to eat. Catherine could not walk very far now and I loved to ride out along the country roads with her. When there was a good day we had a splendid time and we never had a bad time. We knew the baby was very close now and it gave us both a feeling as though something were hurrying us and we could not lose any time together.
One morning I awoke about three o’clock hearing Catherine stirring in the bed.
“Are you all right, Cat?”
“I’ve been having some pains, darling.”
“Regularly?”
“No, not very.”
“If you have them at all regularly we’ll go to the hospital.”
I was very sleepy and went back to sleep. A little while later I woke again.
“Maybe you’d better call up the doctor,” Catherine said. “I think maybe this is it.”
I went to the phone and called the doctor. “How often are the pains coming?” he asked.
“How often are they coming, Cat?”
“I should think every quarter of an hour.”
“You should go to the hospital, then,” the doctor said. “I will dress and go there right away myself.”
I hung up and called the garage near the station to send up a taxi. No one answered the phone for a long time. Then I finally got a man who promised to send up a taxi at once. Catherine was dressing. Her bag was all packed with the things she would need at the hospital and the baby things. Outside in the hall I rang for the elevator. There was no answer. I went downstairs. There was no one downstairs except the night-watchman. I brought the elevator up myself, put Catherine’s bag in it, she stepped in and we went down. The night-watchman opened the door for us and we sat outside on the stone slabs beside the stairs down to the driveway and waited for the taxi. The night was clear and the stars were out. Catherine was very excited.
“I’m so glad it’s started,” she said. “Now in a little while it will be all over.”
“You’re a good brave girl.”
“I’m not afraid. I wish the taxi would come, though.”
We heard it coming up the street and saw its headlights. It turned into the driveway and I helped Catherine in and the driver put the bag up in front.
“Drive to the hospital,” I said.
We went out of the driveway and started up the hill.
At the hospital we went in and I carried the bag. There was a woman at the desk who wrote down Catherine’s name, age, address, relatives and religion, in a book. She said she had no religion and the woman drew a line in the space after that word. She gave her name as Catherine Henry.
“I will take you up to your room,” she said. We went up in an elevator. The woman stopped it and we stepped out and followed her down a hall. Catherine held tight to my arm.
“This is the room,” the woman said. “Will you please undress and get into bed? Here is a night-gown for you to wear.”
“I have a night-gown,” Catherine said.
“It is better for you to wear this night-gown,” the woman said.
I went outside and sat on a chair in the hallway.
“You can come in now,” the woman said from the doorway. Catherine was lying in the narrow bed wearing a plain, square-cut night-gown that looked as though it were made of rough sheeting. She smiled at me.
“I’m having fine pains now,” she said. The woman was holding her wrist and timing the pains with a watch.
“That was a big one,” Catherine said. I saw it on her face.
“Where’s the doctor?” I asked the woman.
“He’s lying down sleeping. He will be here when he is needed.”
“I must do something for Madame, now,” the nurse said. “Would you please step out again?”
I went out into the hall. It was a bare hall with two windows and closed doors all down the corridor. It smelled of hospital. I sat on the chair and looked at the floor and prayed for Catherine.
“You can come in,” the nurse said. I went in.
“Hello, darling,” Catherine said.
“How is it?”
“They are coming quite often now.” Her face drew up. Then she smiled.
“That was a real one. Do you want to put your hand on my back again, nurse?”
“If it helps you,” the nurse said.
“You go away, darling,” Catherine said. “Go out and get something to eat. I may do this for a long time the nurse says.”
“The first labor is usually protracted,” the nurse said.
“Please go out and get something to eat,” Catherine said. “I’m fine, really.”
“I’ll stay awhile,” I said.
The pains came quite regularly, then slackened off. Catherine was very excited. When the pains were bad she called them good ones. When they started to fall off she was disappointed and ashamed.
“You go out, darling,” she said. “I think you are just making me self-conscious.” Her face tied up. “There. That was better. I so want to be a good wife and have this child without any foolishness. Please go and get some breakfast, darling, and then come back. I won’t miss you. Nurse is splendid to me.”
“You have plenty of time for breakfast,” the nurse said.
“I’ll go then. Good-by, sweet.”
“Good-by,” Catherine said, “and have a fine breakfast for me too.”
“Where can I get breakfast?” I asked the nurse.
“There’s a café down the street at the square,” she said. “It should be open now.”
Outside it was getting light. I walked down the empty street to the café. There was a light in the window. I went in and stood at the zinc bar and an old man served me a glass of white wine and a brioche. The brioche was yesterday’s. I dipped it in the wine and then drank a glass of coffee.
“What do you do at this hour?” the old man asked.
“My wife is in labor at the hospital.”
“So. I wish you good luck.”
“Give me another glass of wine.”
He poured it from the bottle slopping it over a little so some ran down on the zinc. I drank this glass, paid and went out. Outside along the street were the refuse cans from the houses waiting for the collector. A dog was nosing at one of the cans.
“What do you want?” I asked and looked in the can to see if there was anything I could pull out for him; there was nothing on top but coffee-grounds, dust and some dead flowers.
“There isn’t anything, dog,” I said. The dog crossed the street. I went up the stairs in the hospital to the floor Catherine was on and down the hall to her room. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I opened the door; the room was empty, except for Catherine’s bag on a chair and her dressing-gown hanging on a hook on the wall. I went out and down the hall, looking for somebody. I found a nurse.
“Where is Madame Henry?”
“A lady has just gone to the delivery room.”
“Where is it?”
“I will show you.”
She took me down to the end of the hall. The door of the room was partly open. I could see Catherine lying on a table, covered by a sheet. The nurse was on one side and the doctor stood on the other side of the table beside some cylinders. The doctor held a rubber mask attached to a tube in one hand.
“I will give you a gown and you can go in,” the nurse said. “Come in here, please.”
She put a white gown on me and pinned it at the neck in back with a safety pin.
“Now you can go in,” she said. I went into the room.
“Hello, darling,” Catherine said in a strained voice. “I’m not doing much.”
“You are Mr. Henry?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. How is everything going, doctor?”
“Things are going very well,” the doctor said. “We came in here where it is easy to give gas for the pains.”
“I want it now,” Catherine said. The doctor placed the rubber mask over her face and turned a dial and I watched Catherine breathing deeply and rapidly. Then she pushed the mask away. The doctor shut off the petcock.
“That wasn’t a very big one. I had a very big one a while ago. The doctor made me go clear out, didn’t you, doctor?” Her voice was strange. It rose on the word doctor.
The doctor smiled.
“I want it again,” Catherine said. She held the rubber tight to her face and breathed fast. I heard her moaning a little. Then she pulled the mask away and smiled.
“That was a big one,” she said. “That was a very big one. Don’t you worry, darling. You go away. Go have another breakfast.”
“I’ll stay,” I said.
We had gone to the hospital about three o’clock in the morning. At noon Catherine was still in the delivery room. The pains had slackened again. She looked very tired and worn now but she was still cheerful.
“I’m not any good, darling,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I thought I would do it very easily. Now—there’s one—” she reached out her hand for the mask and held it over her face. The doctor moved the dial and watched her. In a little while it was over.
“It wasn’t much,” Catherine said. She smiled. “I’m a fool about the gas. It’s wonderful.”
“We’ll get some for the home,” I said.
“There one comes,” Catherine said quickly. The doctor turned the dial and looked at his watch.
“What is the interval now?” I asked.
“About a minute.”
“Don’t you want lunch?”
“I will have something pretty soon,” he said.
“You must have something to eat, doctor,” Catherine said. “I’m so sorry I go on so long. Couldn’t my husband give me the gas?”
“If you wish,” the doctor said. “You turn it to the numeral two.”
“I see,” I said. There was a marker on a dial that turned with a handle.
“I want it now,” Catherine said. She held the mask tight to her face. I turned the dial to number two and when Catherine put down the mask I turned it off. It was very good of the doctor to let me do something.
“Did you do it, darling?” Catherine asked. She stroked my wrist.
“Sure.”
“You’re so lovely.” She was a little drunk from the gas.
“I will eat from a tray in the next room,” the doctor said. “You can call me any moment.” While the time passed I watched him eat, then, after a while, I saw that he was lying down and smoking a cigarette. Catherine was getting very tired.
“Do you think I’ll ever have this baby?” she asked.
“Yes, of course you will.”
“I try as hard as I can. I push down but it goes away. There it comes. Give it to me.”
At two o’clock I went out and had lunch. There were a few men in the café sitting with coffee and glasses of kirsch or marc on the tables. I sat down at a table. “Can I eat?” I asked the waiter.
“It is past time for lunch.”
“Isn’t there anything for all hours?”
“You can have choucroute.”
“Give me choucroute and beer.”
“A demi or a bock?”
“A light demi.”
The waiter brought a dish of sauerkraut with a slice of ham over the top and a sausage buried in the hot wine-soaked cabbage. I ate it and drank the beer. I was very hungry. I watched the people at the tables in the café. At one table they were playing cards. Two men at the table next me were talking and smoking. The café was full of smoke. The zinc bar, where I had breakfasted, had three people behind it now; the old man, a plump woman in a black dress who sat behind a counter and kept track of everything served to the tables, and a boy in an apron. I wondered how many children the woman had and what it had been like.
When I was through with the choucroute I went back to the hospital. The street was all clean now. There were no refuse cans out. The day was cloudy but the sun was trying to come through.
I rode upstairs in the elevator, stepped out and went down the hail to Catherine’s room, where I had left my white gown. I put it on and pinned it in back at the neck. I looked in the glass and saw myself looking like a fake doctor with a beard. I went down the hail to the delivery room. The door was closed and I knocked. No one answered so I turned the handle and went in. The doctor sat by Catherine. The nurse was doing something at the other end of the room.
“Here is your husband,” the doctor said.
“Oh, darling, I have the most wonderful doctor,” Catherine said in a very strange voice. “He’s been telling me the most wonderful story and when the pain came too badly he put me all the way out. He’s wonderful. You’re wonderful, doctor.”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“I know it,” Catherine said. “But you shouldn’t say it.” Then “Give it to me. Give it to me.” She clutched hold of the mask and breathed short and deep, pantingly, making the respirator click. Then she gave a long sigh and the doctor reached with his left hand and lifted away the mask.
“That was a very big one,” Catherine said. Her voice was very strange. “I’m not going to die now, darling. I’m past where I was going to die. Aren’t you glad?”
“Don’t you get in that place again.”
“I won’t. I’m not afraid of it though. I won’t die, darling.”
“You will not do any such foolishness,” the doctor said. “You would not die and leave your husband.”
“Oh, no. I won’t die. I wouldn’t die. It’s silly to die. There it comes. Give it to me.”
After a while the doctor said, “You will go out, Mr. Henry, for a few moments and I will make an examination.”
“He wants to see how I am doing,” Catherine said. “You can come back afterward, darling, can’t he, doctor?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I will send word when he can come back.”
I went out the door and down the hall to the room where Catherine was to be after the baby came. I sat in a chair there and looked at the room. I had the paper in my coat that I had bought when I went out for lunch and I read it. It was beginning to be dark outside and I turned the light on to read. After a while I stopped reading and turned off the light and watched it get dark outside. I wondered why the doctor did not send for me. Maybe it was better I was away. He probably wanted me away for a while. I looked at my watch. If he did not send for me in ten minutes I would go down anyway.
Poor, poor dear Cat. And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other. Thank God for gas, anyway. What must it have been like before there were anaesthetics? Once it started, they were in the mill-race. Catherine had a good time in the time of pregnancy. It wasn’t bad. She was hardly ever sick. She was not awfully uncomfortable until toward the last. So now they got her in the end. You never got away with anything. Get away hell! It would have been the same if we had been married fifty times. And what if she should die? She won’t die. People don’t die in childbirth nowadays. That was what all husbands thought. Yes, but what if she should die? She won’t die. She’s just having a bad time. The initial labor is usually protracted. She’s only having a bad time. Afterward we’d say what a bad time and Catherine would say it wasn’t really so bad. But what if she should die? She can’t die. Yes, but what if she should die? She can’t, I tell you. Don’t be a fool. It’s just a bad time. It’s just nature giving her hell. It’s only the first labor, which is almost always protracted. Yes, but what if she should die? She can’t die. Why would she die? What reason is there for her to die? There’s just a child that has to be born, the by-product of good nights in Milan. It makes trouble and is born and then you look after it and get fond of it maybe. But what if she should die? She won’t die. But what if she should die? She won’t. She’s all right. But what if she should die? She can’t die. But what if she should die? Hey, what about that? What if she should die?
The doctor came into the room.
“How does it go, doctor?”
“It doesn’t go,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I made an examination—” He detailed the result of the examination. “Since then I’ve waited to see. But it doesn’t go.”
“What do you advise?”
“There are two things. Either a high forceps delivery which can tear and be quite dangerous besides being possibly bad for the child, and a Caesarean.”
“What is the danger of a Caesarean?” What if she should die!
“It should be no greater than the danger of an ordinary delivery.”
“Would you do it yourself?”
“Yes. I would need possibly an hour to get things ready and to get the people I would need. Perhaps a little less.”
“What do you think?”
“I would advise a Caesarean operation. If it were my wife I would do a Caesarean.”
“What are the after effects?”
“There are none. There is only the scar.”
“What about infection?”
“The danger is not so great as in a high forceps delivery.”
“What if you just went on and did nothing?”
“You would have to do something eventually. Mrs. Henry is already losing much of her strength. The sooner we operate now the safer.”
“Operate as soon as you can,” I said.
“I will go and give the instructions.”
I went into the delivery room. The nurse was with Catherine who lay on the table, big under the sheet, looking very pale and tired.
“Did you tell him he could do it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that grand. Now it will be all over in an hour. I’m almost done, darling. I’m going all to pieces. Please give me that. It doesn’t work. Oh, it doesn’t work!”
“Breathe deeply.”
“I am. Oh, it doesn’t work any more. It doesn’t work!”
“Get another cylinder,” I said to the nurse.
“That is a new cylinder.”
“I’m just a fool, darling,” Catherine said. “But it doesn’t work any more.” She began to cry. “Oh, I wanted so to have this baby and not make trouble, and now I’m all done and all gone to pieces and it doesn’t work. Oh, darling, it doesn’t work at all. I don’t care if I die if it will only stop. Oh, please, darling, please make it stop. There it comes. Oh Oh Oh!” She breathed sobbingly in the mask.
“It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. Don’t mind me, darling. Please don’t cry. Don’t mind me. I’m just gone all to pieces. You poor sweet. I love you so and I’ll be good again. I’ll be good this time. Can’t they give me something? If they could only give me something.”
“I’ll make it work. I’ll turn it all the way.”
“Give it to me now.”
I turned the dial all the way and as she breathed hard and deep her hand relaxed on the mask. I shut off the gas and lifted the mask. She came back from a long way away.
“That was lovely, darling. Oh, you’re so good to me.”
“You be brave, because I can’t do that all the time. It might kill you.”
“I’m not brave any more, darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me. I know it now.”
“Everybody is that way.”
“But it’s awful. They just keep it up till they break you.”
“In an hour it will be over.”
“Isn’t that lovely? Darling, I won’t die, will I?”
“No. I promise you won’t.”
“Because I don’t want to die and leave you, but I get so tired of it and I feel I’m going to die.”
“Nonsense. Everybody feels that.”
“Sometimes I know I’m going to die.”
“You won’t. You can’t.”
“But what if I should?”
“I won’t let you.”
“Give it to me quick. Give it to me!”
Then afterward, “I won’t die. I won’t let myself die.”
“Of course you won’t.”
“You’ll stay with me?”
“Not to watch it.”
“No, just to be there.”
“Sure. I’ll be there all the time.”
“You’re so good to me. There, give it to me. Give me some more. It’s not working!”
I turned the dial to three and then four. I wished the doctor would come back. I was afraid of the numbers above two.
Finally a new doctor came in with two nurses and they lifted Catherine onto a wheeled stretcher and we started down the hall. The stretcher went rapidly dOwn the hall and into the elevator where every one had to crowd against the wall to make room; then up, then an open door and out of the elevator and down the hall on rubber wheels to the operating room. I did not recognize the doctor with his cap and mask on. There was another doctor and more nurses.
“They’ve got to give me something,” Catherine said. “They’ve got to give me something. Oh please, doctor, give me enough to do some good!”
One of the doctors put a mask over her face and I looked through the door and saw the bright small amphitheatre of the operating room.
“You can go in the other door and sit up there,” a nurse said to me. There were benches behind a rail that looked down on the white table and the lights. I looked at Catherine. The mask was over her face and she was quiet now. They wheeled the stretcher forward. I turned away and walked down the hall. Two nurses were hurrying toward the entrance to the gallery.
“It’s a Caesarean,” one said. “They’re going to do a Caesarean.”
The other one laughed, “We’re just in time. Aren’t we lucky?” They went in the door that led to the gallery.
Another nurse came along. She was hurrying too.
“You go right in there. Go right in,” she said.
“I’m staying outside.”
She hurried in. I walked up and down the hall. I was afraid to go in. I looked out the window. It was dark but in the light from the window I could see it was raining. I went into a room at the far end of the hall and looked at the labels on bottles in a glass case. Then I came out and stood in the empty hall and watched the door of the operating room.
A doctor came out followed by a nurse. He held something in his two hands that looked like a freshly skinned rabbit and hurried across the corridor with it and in through another door. I went down to the door he had gone into and found them in the room doing things to a new-born child. The doctor held him up for me to see. He held him by the heels and slapped him.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s magnificent. He’ll weigh five kilos.”
I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with me. I felt no feeling of fatherhood.
“Aren’t you proud of your son?” the nurse asked. They were washing him and wrapping him in something. I saw the little dark face and dark hand, but I did not see him move or hear him cry. The doctor was doing something to him again. He looked upset.
“No,” I said. “He nearly killed his mother.”
“It isn’t the little darling’s fault. Didn’t you want a boy?”
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